


Hear My Voice

by Alkarinque



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Family Dynamics, Gen, I suppose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-09
Updated: 2020-11-09
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:01:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27473206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alkarinque/pseuds/Alkarinque
Summary: Half a year after her birth, in the warm spring, the city of Armenelos held a great feast in her honour and she lied in her mother’s arms and great songs were sung and many eyes were on her. Yet she was not afraid, only gurgled and smiled happily and received just as many smiles back.Or, Tindómiel has one conversation with her father, about a brother, and one with her mother, about family.
Relationships: Elros Tar-Minyatur & Tindómiel, Tindómiel & Elros Tar-Minyatur's Wife
Comments: 3
Kudos: 19





	Hear My Voice

**Author's Note:**

> I originally began writing this for Finwean Ladies Week a few weeks ago (for 'later generations'), but did not finish it in time. I still think it is rather all over the place - the different parts does not fit together as well as I would like. BUT I post it anyway, instead for Númenor Week :)
> 
> I gave Tindómiel's mother the name Ûrîphêl, meaning 'Sun-daughter', which according to my hc is a reference to her being a human (because in their own tradition, they view themselves as children of the sun, the same way the elves see themselves as a people of the stars. It is an older tradition, maybe referenced in some of their songs which are still sung in Númenor in the time this fic is set in.). I also have a headcanon that the queens also have their royal name, in Quenya, and their Adûnaic name, which is used within the family. Ûrîphêl's royal name is Lauriel, which is meant as a translation of her Adûnaic name, and means more 'daughter of light/gold', and not the sun. 
> 
> The reason Tindómiel did not get a Adûnaic name in this fic is a) I could not find a good enough translation and b) she preferred her Quenya name and therefore her Adûnaic name was not used by her family. b) also goes for Elros, who actually has a semi-canon Adûnaic name

The daughter of the king was born in the winter, as the winds from the sea grew colder and stormier and the paths up to Meneltarma became filled with snow. She already had an older brother, young prince Vardamir, and as she lied in her cot when their parents had gone to bed, he gazed down at her, having sneaked in to the nursery. Her eyes glimmered in the dark, grey as their father’s, and even though she was awake she was quiet, curiously studying her brother’s face the same way he did hers.

Half a year after her birth, in the warm spring, the city of Armenelos held a great feast in her honour and she lied in her mother’s arms and great songs were sung and many eyes were on her. Yet she was not afraid, only gurgled and smiled happily and received just as many smiles back.

Her father was a tall man, taller than anyone else she would ever meet, and his eyes held a light not of this earth. She was told the story of his great-grandmother – sometimes even by himself! – and of fair Lúthien she sometimes dreamed, always waking up with questions about her, what she was like, if she also dreamed like humans did. She wondered if some of the princess of Doriath could be seen in her father, but could not imagine something so unearthly in him, for where the rest of her people easily could see the difference in him and his strangeness, she only saw what was similar to her.

Her mother was also tall, but not as her husband. The queen of Númenor was graceful and bright and sometimes her daughter turned and saw her gaze at her and her brother with a crease in her brow, as if she could not understand, but then she smiled and her daughter did not think more of it. Her mother held a love for everything: trees and flowers, horses and hounds, children and elderly people. But maybe foremost she acted with a gratitude. Often she spoke of the Valar in the West and her daughter politely listened, but though her heart was as faithful as her mother and father’s, she still dreamed dreams of dark forests, of beasts, of a life in shadow and in light, and she knew they showed her Middle-earth in the east. Sometimes she longed for it, but her love for her home, this island-kingdom that her father and mother had helped build, stayed her from ever uttering a word about it.

Tindómiel was her name.

“Is your brother married?” she asked one day when she visited her father in his study, lazily picking through his things. She knew he did not mind as long as she did not destroy anything.

Her father looked shocked and Tindómiel hid her smile. Dumbfounded was not a look often seen of the King of Númenor.

“No, as far as I know it, he is not,” he answered, quickly regaining his composure but it was ruined by his wry smile. “He probably will not in many, many years.”

“Why?” she asked, curious. She was ten years old and had never stopped asking questions. Her father laughed and put down his pen.

“My brother may be brave in some matters, but if he ever finds a woman or man it will take many long years for him to even utter a word to her or him.”

Tindómiel’s mother might only have said ‘woman’, but Elros had always had a different approach to traditions. It was one of the few things he had not changed as he became a Man and Tindómiel barely noticed nowadays. Her father was a bit strange, this she had begun to notice.

“Why? Would he be scared?” she asked.

The uncle she had never met was always present in her father’s stories about himself and somehow Tindómiel thought he knew Elrond, even though he lived in the east and was an Elf and would probably never meet her.

“Oh, yes,” her father grinned. “But maybe scared is not the right word – he would be nervous and careful, since it is a matter of the heart,” here his grin turned into a sad smile and Tindómiel frowned at the change. “You see, child, my brother and I learnt that it is a great commitment to give your heart to someone else and my brother, who decided to become immortal, will have to live with his decision for a longer time than I will. And he was always more careful than I ever was.”

“With his heart?”

“Aye. Though he has always been generous with his love.”

“Is it not the same thing?”

Elros smiled again and Tindómiel preferred that look much more than the sadness.

“To some it is,” he only said and she opened her mouth to ask him to elaborate, as she always did, but then her maid showed up in the doorway and looking more worried than Tindómiel thought necessary. She had to go back to the library for her lessons.

Her father waved at her as she left and the soft light from the windows made his smile warmer, and she would remember how he looked right there, behind his desk, relaxed, with the silver embroidery glittering weakly. It was the image she would always remember him as when she was older.

She waved back and gave him a mischievous smile.

When she was fifteen years old she was not viewed as fully grown, though her peers certainly were. Her father claimed that he was first physically grown by twenty and mentally he guessed at twenty-six. She would probably be full grown earlier, but still later than usual Men. ‘A consequence of elvish heritage,' he said.

Tindómiel had found it a load of bollocks and suspected that her father had actually grown since coming to Númenor – an advisor at court claimed the King used to be shorter when they first arrived, but that was thought to be a rumour.

Because of her ‘late blooming’, as her mother put it, she had to follow Ûrîphêl in her duties outside of court instead of joining it like her friends. That included sewing in the garden, speaking with the gardener, travelling to Emerië and other parts of the island to meet with farmers and shepherds, visiting the scholars, seeing to the supplies of the palace and other small administrative tasks which her mother shared with Elros. Ûrîphêl, ever aware of her children’s dislikes, met her frustration with patience and it might just have made it worse.

One day, they sat in the garden, Ûrîphêl, or Lauriel as was her royal name, looking over some documents about the supplies taken to their summer house in Eldalondë and Tindómiel embroidering one of her handkerchiefs. With how elaborate it was turning out she would have to stop using it as one, though. With thread she had made a white horse running through a dark field and now she began making dark mountains in the background. She had it from a dream.

“Child, do you ever wonder about your elven relatives?” her mother suddenly asked, breaking the silence.

Her daughter looked up, surprised, and found her mother having abandoned her task, the papers lying in her lap and her face frowning.

“Why?” Tindómiel asked.

“I was just thinking. About the West. And Middle-Earth. How we are right in the middle, and my children belongs to both sides, in a way. I wondered if it is hard for you, being in-between Elf and Man.”

Tindómiel now frowned. “Mother, we are Men. We are not in-between.”

“But you are. Stronger than other children, singing more beautifully than any bard of Men, shining as if from within ... “

“Mother,” Tindómiel said and took Ûrîphêl’s hand, trying to comfort her, “we may be different to others, but our souls will go the same way as the rest. We are not torn between two kindreds. We belong to one.”

Lauriel looked at her daughter, seeing those deep, dark eyes glittering like two weak stars. Her light from within could sometimes be startling and blinding, but now it was like a fire in a fireplace, where you could warm your hands. Ûrîphêl wondered if her face resembled anyone’s in her husband’s family. If someone else could claim to be so beautiful.

 _No one,_ she thought in a bout of defiance, _no one can be like her. She is nothing reborn; she is herself and I have made her so._

“Thank you, child,” she said.

Tindómiel’s shoulders slumped in relief. Ûrîphêl smiled.

“Now answer my question: do you ever think about your immortal uncle and grandparents?”

“Yes,” her daughter answered without having to think. “I think about my grandfather a lot, him up in the sky all alone, and my uncle. Sometimes about Elwing, too, but father tells me nothing of neither her nor Eärendil, so have so little to go on.”

“But foremost I wonder if I will ever have cousins,” Tindómiel continued. “If my uncle will marry and have children and what they will be like. I always hoped to have another girl in the family.”

Now it was Ûrîphêl’s time to grasp her daughter’s hand in comfort. She knew her daughter had wanted another sister and instead got Atanalcar, a wild little brother. They were alike in many ways.

“But even if I one day will, it will be far in the future,” Tindómiel looked at her mother, and there was no fear, only resignation. “I will probably never meet them. I will have passed by then.”

“Probably,” Ûrîphêl said. “You can grieve, child. Fate put you in different times.”

“It is foolish to grieve for something that has not even come to pass yet,” her daughter said defiantly.

“No,” her mother said, “it is not.”

Tindómiel had very little to say to that. After a moment of silence, she looked down on her work, on the white horse running and the field she would never walk through, mountaintops she would never see with her own eyes. _Maybe I can grieve this, too._

**Author's Note:**

> Give a kudos or a comment if you liked it!


End file.
